Designing A Complete Solution To Address Condensate In The Conveying System At A Large Confectionary Operation

By Kennedy Santiago, Aerzen Do Brazil

Condensation can present a significant challenge for food manufacturers when it comes to bringing sensitive ingredients, most notably sugar, into their plants. Even trace amounts of water can lead to caking/crystallization, thereby damaging valuable batches of the material and slowing down the pneumatic conveying process. Additionally, this increases the risk of clogging the conveyance piping system, which can lead to labor and downtime — at a big cost — to manually disassemble the system to remove the trapped sugar.

One global consumer goods company was facing this issue at a facility in a high-humidity area. Massive amounts of sugar were necessary to keep the confectionary product lines running, but getting large batches of sugar from vendors into its production plants became problematic as the company began to experience condensation issues. Sugar is a delicate material to handle by nature, and the humidity added an entirely new dimension to the conveyance process that needed to be addressed.

It wouldn’t be enough just to add some equipment to the process to remedy the issue. The company needed an entire solution, so it turned to Aerzen for assistance.